June I (II)

“June?”

The voice that holds my name is one that ordinarily beckons me back into sleep’s recesses, a sign not to break the surface just yet. I turn and the voice persists.

“June?”

My eyes pry themselves open. My mother’s head floats above me, disembodied in a way I have become accustomed to. Slowly, the rest of her comes into focus. She is whole.

“Mom?”

She gives me a wilted smile. The room is mine; not the one I have adopted, but the one that has visited me as a relic. I am used to it existing only as a site of continuous loss, with every recollection biting away at a certain piece of memorabilia or details that were never important—they just were. I do not know how I am supposed to react. I have imagined this moment before as a simple hypothetical. Now that I am submerged in it, I am immobilized. What could I say? Nothing that applies in the other world and time could possibly apply here. I haven’t thrown out her ashes. She is here, not a shadow of herself nor a projection made of all the parts of her that I have gathered from memory.

My mother speaks before I can remain preoccupied by my silence. “You’re late for school, June. But your father and I have something to discuss with you, and so it might be best for you to stay home today so we can all talk. How does that sound?”

She has always been this way, the kind of parent my teachers scoffed at. Case in point: Our family skipped my junior high graduation to pick berries on the other side of White Creek. Far from the pinnacle of responsible motherhood. I nod, still unable to form any viable response, and she eyes me strangely—is the other June more talkative?—before slipping out of the door and closing it behind her.

****

The kitchen is different than I remember. A large oak table is the centerpiece of the room, with a modest bowl of mangoes and pears in the middle. My parents are sitting so close to each other that the table appears even larger, and I sit across from them, feeling as though I am peering at their figures from the other side of a desert.

“Hi, Mom…Dad.” The words bang against each other as they tumble out of my mouth, like baubles I am throwing up. My mother and father either do not notice or do not care because they turn to grin at each other before looking back at me.

“June…we figured you’d need a day off today,” my dad says. “Not only because you’ve been working a little too hard, but because we have something we’ve wanted to tell you for a month or so. Something exciting for all of us.”

“Yeah?”

He laughs and my mother follows. It has always irked me, the way they move as a unit, daunted by any possibility of separation. “Do you want to tell her, or should I?”

My mother rests her head on his shoulder. “You tell her. I’m too tired to explain it all. You’ve always been much better at these things.”

“June…like I said, we’ve been talking and thinking about this for quite awhile, and with you going off to college next year and all, we think it might be best to make some premature changes. Things that’ll make all of us feel better. Your mother and I think it would be a good idea to move.”

“We’re moving? Where?”

“No, no….we’re moving. You know my sister, Sara. She’s right down the road and she said she’d be thrilled to have you until it’s time for you to leave, too. But our time to leave has been long overdue. We love you, June, you know that. But this was never in the plan. This house, this town, this life…we did it all for you. And after a sacrifice like that, do you really think we’re asking for a lot? We’ll keep in touch of course, and we’ll come visit when we can, but we can’t stay here, June. It wouldn’t be right.”

Immobility returns, except this time I can’t be content with it. “It wouldn’t be right? It wouldn’t be right to stay and raise your child for another year?”

My mother groans. “I knew you were going to protest. But please, June. Do you really think it’s fair to make us stay here? We’re withering, June. Don’t do this. It’s not like we won’t see you again. We just need the independence, and it wouldn’t hurt for you to have some as well. You’re going to be an adult soon, for god’s sake.”

“If you two are my models, I don’t think I’ll ever be an adult. I don’t even know what an adult is at this point. I don’t know why I thought for a second that having you both around could make anything different. I love you, but I don’t want to be anything like you. I don’t even want to be around you at this point.”

“I think you forgot a ‘don’t’ or two, June,” my father cracks, summoning my mother’s worst guffaw. I cannot do anything but stare.

My parents are breathing before me, planning their futures before me. For the past two years, I have wondered what what they were thinking, why there was no explanation. They weren’t thinking anything.

I rise from the table, and I walk to the front door. I do not look at any of the details that I strived to remember for so long, because they are no longer a part of my life. They are no longer mine.

****

There is a boy waiting outside, staring at our house. “What do you want?” I yell.

The boy laughs, then saunters through the grass toward me. “You’re in a mood today, aren’t you? Why aren’t you at school?”

Because I have never seen him before, I am at a complete loss as to how I should interpret his presence on my lawn. He fiddles with the ponytail settled against the back of his neck as we take in my hesitation. The movement triggers something in me, and I realize that I do recognize him, not from my own memories but from ones projected in the place where I met myself. Finally, I say: “I woke up late. So here I am. Why aren’t you?”

He laughs again, with more force. “You know I don’t go in on Wednesdays and Fridays. I get a pass to take care of my mom.”

“It doesn’t look like you’re taking care of her now.”

“I came to check up on you. Which I’m now convinced was a pretty good decision. How about we go for a walk? I don’t have to go back just yet.”

We enter the forest accompanied by his unending strings of words, about people I do not know or recall. It is something between a thrill and an unending confusion, to see that the other June chose this boy, quite possibly, as a very close friend.

We reach the mouth of a long dell and stop. “Let’s rest here,” I say, dropping down into the leaf-strewn crevice. The boy nods and remains standing.

“Did you hear that everyone got sent home early today? Apparently some girl from school died and Principal Lemmings freaked out. Drowned in White Creek. That’s why I thought you’d be at your house earlier but, knowing you, I wasn’t surprised to hear that it was a classic case of oversleeping.”

“What? No way. Who died?’

He slips his hand beneath a loose piece of bark on the trunk that he is leaning against, making no move to lift it out of place. “She’s in our Civics class…Laura, I think?”

Loren?

“Yeah…something like that. The memorial’s tomorrow but, uh…” The boy snaps the bark off and stares at it before flinging it to the side. He looks at me and grins in a way that makes me stop questioning his role as anyone’s other half. “We can come here if you want. I haven’t seen you enough lately.”

Shock cycles back, not heading for any particular spot but my entire being, limb to limb, across my skin, in my throat, shooting through my fingers. Loren…I am sinking into a place where I can see everything, feel everything, but cannot accept it. This isn’t my life. This isn’t my life! “I have to go,” I say, rising so quickly that I scarcely feel it happen. My limbs are guiding my mind. The boy chuckles until I speed past him.

“Where are you going, June? June!”

I run.

The creek has been flagged, its borders dotted with red triangles in every direction. I continue down the line until I am behind my aunt’s house, then keep going until I reach the little den in the dirt above the river. Stumbling, I find my way inside, not questioning the dampness or the way my body seems to sink into the dirt. It is time. I close my eyes.

June I and June II Meet (II)

“June?”

My sound does not resonate with the darkness the way hers did. Instead of morphing into a tremor, I find the word shrinking until I forget that I ever released it, as if it has been sucked into the Styxian air. I look down at the path, same as before; it flickers and for a moment, I truly believe that this unending nothingness will give out and leave me bared to whatever has brought me here.

“June?”

No resounding footsteps. Before there’s time to be shocked, the darkness switches to a slowly swirling image. The bits and pieces from before have been filtered into large aquarium tanks all around me, left to float and naturally re-arrange themselves. Slivers have become full-fledged, no longer infant memories. There are others. I see myself, but it is not myself, and I let those realizations settle in my mind without going to battle on my mental field. I see my parents waving at me. I see Loren floating facedown. I see Loren smiling. I see my parents waving again, and I shut my eyes because there is no turning away in this place.

“June…”

Her voice pries my lids open. She is immediately before me, the way that she was when we parted.

“Why didn’t I hear you?”

“You didn’t need to. You knew I was coming. That’s why you called out for me.”

“What was that? It was real, wasn’t it?”

She pinches me and I stumble, speechless.

“Was that real? Of course it was. When you go back to where I have just come from, it will still be real. When I meet you again, it—”

“Again? I don’t want to go back there. I won’t.”

“How else will you learn? It isn’t like you have that much going for you. Don’t forget, I saw your life. I lived it, for chrissake. It’s a neat little room you have and a neat little girlfriend but you couldn’t possibly be fine with that. Don’t you like seeing what it’s like on the other side? Don’t you like seeing what you could be? What you wanted to be?”

“I don’t want to be you. I mean, I am you but it’s just…it’s not the same and you know that. That’s the thing. I’m not supposed to be you. I already knew that. I’m supposed to be the only June. I don’t need to leave myself.”

“You’ll find your way back here, even if you don’t want to. You can convince yourself that you’re happy, and you may be, but you’ll never stop thinking about what could have been.”

“That’s true.” I lean forward and kiss her on the cheek. For the first time since meeting her, she looks unsure, left without a cue for her next move. I am just as unsure, but I welcome the feeling.

“I have a girlfriend to get back to,” I say, and about this I am certain. “Glad you think my room is neat. Perhaps we will be seeing each other.”

I turn, and I walk. ♦